


Be a Body

by junkverse



Series: trans skate boys [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Depression, Implied Transphobia, M/M, Trans Male Character, Yuuri is a good egg, trans Viktor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 12:25:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9234896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junkverse/pseuds/junkverse
Summary: Viktor has been performing for a lifetime, both on and off the ice. After so long, he's not sure he can stop.





	

Viktor had gotten in the habit of performance early.

Part of it was being a skater. You had to assume different roles, different masks, and wear them convincingly while flying over the ice, pouring the emotions of someone else through your motions. You had to be everything and nothing, as needed.

Part of it was something else entirely. 

He didn’t _always_ know -he’d been perfectly content with dresses and stockings and “she” for a little while- but he knew, not long after he first started skating. Viktor sometimes wondered if there was a correlation between the two, if stepping onto the ice had shifted some internal gears, but if there was one he couldn’t see it.

Viktor had been eight and still very much unsure on the ice, and still had much to learn about things outside the rink. But he knew he had to hide this new knowledge of himself.

So he put on a mask. His first. He put on the mask of a good daughter, and wore it as well as he could, until he was twelve and Yakov offered to train him. Away from his parents, he let the mask down a little, asked to be called “he,” asked to be called “Viktor,” and not by his old name. Asked if there was any way he could be in the men’s division.

Yakov, to his credit, said yes. In practice and at competition, Viktor never heard his old name, was never called a girl. He skated with the other boys in his division, and it was one less mask to wear.

Home was different. There were more masks there. More performing. His parents got more distant and chilly no matter how he acted, until at fourteen he gave up and left. He asked Yakov if Viktor could stay with him.

Yakov, to his credit, said yes.

Viktor’s senior debut crept closer, and people whispered. Viktor bound his chest (despite Yakov’s admonitions), started taking hormones, but kept his hair long. The whispering slowly became louder, and Viktor started to hear things, just at the fringes of discussion, that frightened him. He wore a costume and skated a program that suggested at both the girl he had been and the man he was now, and the whispering took a decidedly angrier turn.

It wasn’t a problem. The people that mattered didn’t care.

But still. Viktor put on a mask, and performed. Like he did with everything.

The seasons passed. Viktor won medal after medal, never straying too far from the podium. He cut his hair (much as he liked it, he liked the comments about how feminine he looked less), put on more muscle. He had top surgery as soon as he could, pointedly ignoring the press chatter about his months-long absence from the rink, and then he got his first Grand Prix gold when he was twenty-two. 

There wasn’t much talk about how he looked after that.

Well. There was talk about how _sexy_ he was, with headlines like “Figure Skating’s Hottest Bachelor!” which was oddly distressing in its own way, but he preferred that to the alternative. The rumors about his assumed escapades grew louder after his second and third Grand Prix medals (and louder still, once he and Christophe became friends), but he pretended not to hear. Or went with it -whatever a particular role demanded.

By the time his fourth Grand Prix gold was around his neck, Viktor was _tired_.

Masks upon masks now -the champion, the playboy, the skating genius- and he couldn’t take off any of them. Alone, certainly, but not around anyone or anything but an empty apartment and Makkachin. Twenty-seven and gold medal number five loomed, and Viktor half-prayed that he’d finally crack and flame out into a glorious ruin, if only so he could take a bow, let the curtain close, and _stop_.

He didn’t. He won his fifth gold. His smile at the podium was closer to a grimace, and he was amazed that no one seemed to notice. He went to the banquet because it was expected of him, it was part of the performance, and-

-he met Yuuri.

Who was clearly very drunk, for starters, but _god_ was he fun. No pretense there, just a tie wrapped around his head and oddly coordinated, graceful dancing, and flushed smiles and an invitation to tango with him. Which Viktor took him up on, and through the night Viktor felt the masks slip, one by one, and couldn’t bring himself to care.

The next morning Yuuri was gone, and Viktor felt more tired than ever.

He went to Worlds and medaled, and ducked away from skating and the press as gracefully as possible. He stayed home, stayed away from the rink, and tried to peel away the years of performance. It was harder than he thought it would be.

Then he stumbled across Yuuri’s video. Or, rather, Christophe and Mila and half a dozen other people forwarded it to him, but still. He saw.

Yuuri was sober, and quite a bit heavier, but even so: no pretense, just himself and the ice, the emotions not those of a role or an archetype but so clearly of himself that he all but sang.

It was beautiful. And it was a glimpse of something Viktor had not had in years.

So Viktor dropped everything, went to Japan, and offered to coach Yuuri. Maybe it wasn’t best to make that offer _naked_ (if Viktor were being honest he hadn’t exactly been thinking with his head at the time), and with the way Yuuri flinched and shied away maybe that spark from the banquet hadn’t been as mutual as Viktor remembered. (Or there was a disgust there that Yuuri was too polite to voice.) But Yuuri had asked, and Viktor did try to keep his promises, regardless of how sober he’d been when he made them.

And now… Now there was the summer before the regional qualifier, long days of training stretching out past May and into mid-September, when the season started. As much as Viktor was aware of just how little time that was, the days nevertheless took on a strange, elastic quality, as if the hours themselves turned plastic and stretched under the heat of the summer sun. Between jogging and workouts and drills at the rink, Viktor felt himself relax for the first time in years, letting himself become comfortable in the routine of training, and the slow rhythms of the little seaside town.

Yuuri relaxed, too. He was still an incredibly wound-up, anxious person, but he _did_ relax. He didn’t flinch from Viktor’s touches, didn’t become (as much of) a stuttering mess when Viktor flirted with him. He opened up, little bits of childhood memories and his time in Detroit peppering their conversations. Yuuri would sometimes tell stories about his parents, and his sister, and Viktor had to suppress an odd pang of jealousy.

During one of their break days, Yuuri asked Viktor about his family.

“What about them?” Viktor said, fiddling with a slice of apple. They were sitting in a secluded corner of the dining room, watching TV (there had been some sort of drama on, but it’d faded into the evening news and neither of them had bothered to change the channel.) Yuuri’s mom had made a little plate of sliced apples for them, cut so that they looked like rabbits, and they were almost too cute to eat. Almost.

“You got any siblings?” Yuuri said.

Viktor shook his head. “Just me.”

“Oh.” A pause. “What about your parents? What do they do?”

“Mama’s a secretary. She works in a law firm, last I heard. Papa’s in sales. Never really understood what, exactly.”

“Wait, when did you see them last?”

“Uh.” Viktor counted on his fingers. “Thir...teen years? Ish?”

Yuuri gave him an alarmed look. “That long? Why?”

“Mutual agreement,” Viktor said. He bit off the head of an apple bunny, and Yuuri seemed to get the point. Yuuri averted his gaze, meekly staring at the TV, and Viktor felt a little bad for being so… snippy.

“What about your family?” Viktor asked.

“You already know all about mine,” Yuuri said.

“Tell me about yourself, then.”

Yuuri shook his head. “You know everything there is to know about me.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” Viktor said. He leaned backwards until he was laying on the floor. “C’mon. Tell me something no one else knows.”

Yuuri cast him a brief, annoyed look, before he lapsed into a thoughtful silence.

“All right,” he said. “But only if you tell me something.”

“Fair enough.”

Yuuri rested his elbows on the low table, chin resting on his hands as he pondered. Viktor took an apple slice off the plate and munched on it, watching Yuuri think.

“So, my last couple months in Detroit,” Yuuri began, “I didn’t have a whole lot of free time, with prepping for the Grand Prix and everything. But I did want to take some dance classes to maybe help out with my routines. I was too advanced for the ballet classes I could find, the swing class wasn’t open, and neither was ballroom, but… there _was_ a pole dancing class open on Friday nights.”

Viktor stared at him. “You took pole dancing classes.” Well, that explained at least one part of the banquet.

“Yep. I got to be pretty good, actually. Been ages though. I’m probably really rusty.”

“Ah, you might be surprised,” Viktor said. “I imagine it’s like riding a bike. Or a pole, I guess.”

Yuuri laughed, lightly smacking him on the shoulder. “You’re the worst.”

“I’m the best,” Viktor retorted, “and I’ve got the medals to prove it.”

Yuuri shook his head, but he was still laughing. They both were. Eventually they lapsed into a comfortable silence, the TV murmuring in the background.

“Your turn,” Yuuri said, popping an apple slice into his mouth.

Viktor frowned. “I can’t think of anything.”

“There must be something.”

Well. There were several somethings, but none of them were particularly interesting. Except-

“There… is this one thing,” Viktor said.

“Oh?”

Viktor pressed his lips into a thin line, considering. How did you explain something that had grown and taken shape for nearly three decades? How did you explain the necessity of a performance that didn’t end? There was a long silence as Viktor tried to think of how best to say it, turning the words over and over in his head, rolling them on his tongue until they felt right.

“So,” he said finally, “I wasn’t… born as Viktor.”

Yuuri blinked. “Okay.”

“I had a different name,” Viktor said. “Doesn’t matter what it was. It’s gone now. But I went by it for… for a little while. Until I was twelve or so. I realized it didn’t fit me, so I… changed it.” He fiddled with the hem of his shirt. “Among other things.”

Yuuri said nothing, but Viktor heard him shift as he leaned forward, listening. Viktor wanted to look at him, wanted to see if there was anything like comprehension or understanding in Yuuri’s expression, but couldn’t.

Viktor kept his gaze fixed to the ceiling as he said, “I’m trans. I’m not… out to many people, and you probably already guessed, but. I wanted to say it. So that you knew for sure.”

No response. Yuuri was processing it, probably, but that didn’t stop the fear blooming in Viktor’s chest, didn’t stop the sudden tightness in his throat, didn’t stop the tremor in his hands.

“I-I still want to coach you” Viktor said, trying to keep his voice even, “but I’d understand if you don’t-”

He felt a hand on his cheek, and he finally looked at Yuuri.

Yuuri was looking at him with… he wasn’t sure what. Not anger, or fear, or disgust. His eyes were shining with what were probably unshed tears, and there were the beginnings of a smile tugging at his lips, but for whatever reason Viktor couldn’t read him.

“You’re not mad?” Viktor asked.

“Why would I be mad?” Yuuri said, brow knit in confusion.

“I mean,” Viktor said, swallowing, “I’m… I might not be what you expect.”

Yuuri snorted. “There’s a lot about you that isn’t like what I expected.”

Viktor tilted his head, quirking an eyebrow. “Oh? Like what?”

“ _Well_ ,” Yuuri said, rolling his eyes and settling back onto his knees. He held up some fingers and began to count them off, “You’re super graceless off of the ice-”

“Ex _cuse_ me?”

“-You’re absolutely _terrible_ at being encouraging, you can’t hold your liquor-”

“I most certainly can!” Viktor said, aghast.

Yuuri raised his eyebrows. “Oh, yeah? And how many times have I had to help you back here after you go drinking with Minako?”

Viktor opened his mouth to protest, but reconsidered, and shrugged. “You have a point there. But,” he said, pointing a finger at Yuuri and trying to suppress a chuckle, “the rest is outright slander, and I will not stand for it.”

“All right, all right, I retract my statements,” Yuuri said, giggling and batting Viktor’s finger out of the way. “You’re the most graceful person who ever walked the planet, from whom praise flows like honey.”

“Damn right,” Viktor said, just before the both of them dissolved into helpless laughter. By the time Viktor could catch his breath they were both laying on the floor, legs tangled together, hands not quite touching.

Yuuri smiled, threading his fingers through Viktor’s, and something large and warm made its home between Viktor’s ribs. He smiled back. His eyes stung with the threat of tears, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

“You know,” Yuuri said, rubbing a thumb across Viktor’s knuckles, “that you can be yourself around me. Right?”

Viktor couldn’t get any words past the lump in his throat, so he nodded.

“And if I say anything that… makes you feel unsafe, you can call me out on it, right?”

Viktor nodded again. His vision was blurring through the tears, but he didn’t wipe them away. He half-hoped they would evaporate if he pretended they weren’t happening.

“And you’re always welcome here, no matter what. Okay?”

“Okay,” Viktor said, and the tears finally spilled, and his breath hitched as he tried to wipe them away. He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes, trying to compose himself, but it was like something had given way, deep inside him, and the tears wouldn’t stop. A stifled sob escaped him, and he found himself being pulled up and into a hug, Yuuri murmuring something soft and soothing in his ear. His hands were warm on Viktor’s back, and Viktor couldn’t remember ever feeling so small and yet so safe at the same time.

Eventually they broke away, Yuuri carefully wiping at the last of the tears. Viktor felt… wrung out, but also lighter, as if some great burden had finally been taken off his shoulders and set down.

“You okay?” Yuuri asked.

Viktor smiled. “Never better.”

Yuuri smiled back, and pressed his forehead against Viktor’s for a moment before he stood, and offered his hand to Viktor.

“C’mon,” he said, “I think Mari and mom might like some help with dinner.”

Viktor nodded and let Yuuri pull him up before grabbing the plate and following him into the kitchen. Soon he was helping prep for the dinner rush with Mari and Hiroko and Yuuri, chatting and laughing in amongst the clatter and heat of the kitchen, until the last of the plates were cleared and the last guest had left. 

There was no performance. No masks. Just the simple warmth of being with people who cared, and knew Viktor for who he was.

**Author's Note:**

> So, uh. I noticed that there wasn't much trans!Viktor fic floating around, and about 5 hours later this happened. Probably the most I've ever written in one go, actually.
> 
> If I'm being honest, this mostly happened as a way to help sort out my own feelings about being trans. And it did help in that regard, at least a little, though I feel like maybe the final product isn't as cohesive as I would like. Ah, well.
> 
> Title is from the song of the same name by Grimes.
> 
> Feedback is appreciated, and thanks for reading.
> 
> (you can also find me over on [twitter](https://twitter.com/junkverse))


End file.
